


Comfort Me With Apples

by CopperBeech



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: 1990s Joker, Abduction, Apples, Arkham Asylum, College, Costumes, Full Moon, Gen, Gun Violence, North Dutchess County, POV Joker, Post-Killing Joke, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Sort Of, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-07-31 12:17:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20114980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: The Joker's on the run again, but an irresistible prank takes him over the river and through the woods. Featuring a Summer Of Love van, the bucolic environs of the Hudson north of Gotham City, the trials of an earnest academic, hijinks with apples, rural law-enforcement Elrods, a nod to Hitchcock, the ubiquitous Kilroy, and of course the necessary intervention of our favorite flying rodent.Set sometime after "The Killing Joke," but with nods to the Joker's classic origins.Dr. Mayhew seemed to be attempting a change in position. I took time out to observe that she was head down on the passenger seat with one leg twisted behind the gearshift, on which leg I was partly sitting.Never be careless with your equipment. I shifted long enough to yank her loose, prodding the pistol into her face to discourage ideas of sabotage.“Uncapsize yourself, Doctor,” I said. “You’re wrinkling my tailcoat. Do you know what tailors charge?”“You’re wrinkling mycar,you – you animated have-a-nice-day button.”Perhaps there was hope for her. “Nice try,” I said. “You need to work on the timing.”





	Comfort Me With Apples

**Author's Note:**

> The second of my thirty-year-old Joker stories, written when Batman and the Joker were having quite a revival, and as a bit of a love letter to my old school (fans of Steely Dan will now know which one that is) or at least the orchard countryside around it. Written before my lighter and shorter Joker fic, Client Privilege, which took a fraction of the concept of this story and did a brisk jog around a city block with it, but which clearly happened first since we have here the return of the dimwitted henchman Mortimer.

I’m a naughty boy, longing to be punished. At least that’s what the so-called doctors at Arkham said, during one of the brief periods when I condescended to entertain them with my conversation; this supposedly explained my painstaking orchestration of crimes that leave me vulnerable to recapture and incarceration. If that’s the case, I wonder how they explain my equally powerful motivation to make a break for it as soon as their backs are turned. Believe me, if I wanted punishment, their unimaginative company would satisfy any masochist.

No, I need some honest steel for my flint to strike, not their soggy, triplicate-filed kindling. One of them explained what he called my fixation on the Batman by proposing that I had cast the truculent cave-dweller in the role of my father, from whom I craved attention. My real father is as irrelevant to me as is yours; so far as craving attention, I am not the one attired like a refugee from an aerobics class. (If my appearance is distinctive, I cannot claim the credit; and if I dress to it, I am only taking the advice of the magazines which explain the success potential of my seasonal palette. It saves indecision in the mornings.) The same quack even went so far as to characterize my “fantasy” of dispatching his ludicrous sidekick the Boy Wonder – another showy gym advertisement – as an obscure manifestation of sibling rivalry.

Bat crap. I quashed the little wretch because he was interfering, and as a judicious favor to some associates in Lebanon, who had let it be known that they would appreciate his elimination before he had more occasion to go careering around the country like a loose cannon. I had recently bungled a deal with them, to be perfectly honest, and it was imperative that I raise the value of my stock before attempting further business. My life was more valuable to me than his; I hope that no one finds this surprising.

Employees of mine pressured me to monitor the death notices in the Gotham Gazette, going so far as to procure copies in airports for my delectation. I would, they pointed out, quickly ferret out the young whelp’s identity and with it that of his mentor, the Batman. I was at some pains to explain that this was not my concern. Whomever the Batman may be, he ceases to interest me when he removes his pointy-eared battle gear. In my estimation, he only exists when he wears that mask; deprived of its concealment, I am sure mundaneness engulfs him, and he worries about stock portfolios, saturated fats and dental plaque. Not at all a worthy foil for me, I assure you.

As for myself, of course, the divine madness that informs my character need never succumb to a dull reflection in the mirror. A little obligatory Max Factor from time to time is all it takes to make me wonder why I ever for a second regretted my transformation. Sadly, these moments occur. So it was that I found myself on a pleasantly rain-washed autumn morning, checking my _maquillage_ for gaps before stepping out on the shoulder of State Route Nine about two hours north of Gotham City as the road rolls. The hiker hitches somewhat more slowly. I’d slept rough, knowing only the satisfaction derived from leaving a trail of clues in the opposite direction; old acquaintances of mine in Metropolis and New Jersey would have awkward questions to answer, while I was enjoying the clear air of the apple country. Apples are wholesome. I dislike them. Their trees, however, are wonderfully gnarled and receptive of the wandering stranger. The rain had scarcely dampened my bedroll, stolen neatly from a van parked outside the White Horse Tavern just north of Tarrytown the night before.

My rightful garments, in a pristine condition, had been supplied by the same agents who had dutifully laid my trail of blood-red herrings. So far short of my destination, however, their display seemed impolitic. Gracious patrons of the Beekman Cleaners in Rhinebeck had solved my dilemma; one of them was even tolerably close to my size, lacking perhaps an inch in length of leg. With restraint I plundered only his trousers, completing my ensemble with shirt, sweater and jacket liberated severally from other customers’ ready orders. By the time enough of them complained to indicate a pattern I would be long gone from here. They might not even notice. People are terribly careless.

I resembled an overaged college student or bohemian as I stood upon the shoulder, my complexion deftly disguised, my splendid green hair – I think it is my finest feature – doubly concealed by a leather slouch hat and an application of some formula which assured me that my friends would only wonder why I looked so much younger. I have no friends that I know of and find that lunacy, if one can so define the great creative fire which informs my being, suffices to maintain youth. Nonetheless, I chose to rise to the resemblance. I waited for a likely vehicle – ignoring eighteen wheelers driven by troglodytes and a rusted-out gas-eating sedan ditto – and was shortly gratified when a gut-green van ornamented with bright painted arabesques pulled over in response to my extended thumb.

Really, I am an urban creature. Not the splendid hues of the sunrise an hour earlier, not the capricious boldness of the little sparrow which had nearly perched on my hand as I lay, odalisque, in the splayed lower boughs of a large Stayman Winesap, touched such a chord of response as the choking petroleum fumes of the rusted vehicle, clearly held together by paint and Bondo. I raised my hand in greeting, lifting my bedroll and the duffle containing my effects from the pebbled shoulder.

The driver was a lean young man, hatted as was I, wearing a suede Buffalo Bill jacket with darkened and tattered fringes, hair the dark blond of a lion’s mane filling most of the space between; a perfect match for his conveyance. “Out early, brother,” he said, ramping the engine (no doubt to keep the braked vehicle from stalling) while I hoisted my length into the passenger seat. “Where you headed?”

“About another ten miles in the direction you’re going,” I said. I could afford to walk two miles, once I saw my landmark. “If you’re going that far.”

He shrugged. “Head start on the morning,” he said. “I got a shopping trip up to Albany. Ought to do it, huh?”

“I’m more than obliged.”

He pulled back onto the rural two-lane, nursing a cantankerous clutch. “Didn’t know there was anything ten miles up this road,” he said. “They put something in between Tivoli and Hudson since I looked, or you got friends live along there?”

“Friends,” I concurred. Tivoli is a town that particularly charms me, and I made a note to walk through it again. Some twenty years ago jaded newshounds made the discovery that the population had been inbreeding until the locale’s average I.Q. could be measured with a ruler. A television special was made, on the condition that its broadcast be deferred until the town could import some new blood. I enjoyed teasing my imagination with the question of how they had gone about it. Perhaps my doctors at Arkham would appreciate a letter on the subject,.

“Musta slept in Heller’s orchard, hah?” said my driver, hugging the right shoulder to let a heavy truck pass. I would have scowled if such an expression were in my repertoire. “Travelin’ hard.” He reached to the dash to turn on, and immediately down, a cassette deck loaded with a tape of the Woodstock era. I saw then in the angled light that he was several years older than my original estimate. More unsettlingly, I realized that he was a she. The cheek that leaned into the slanting morning sun was as beardless as my own – since my rebirth, if you will, I have been spared many nuisances – and the throat was devoid of Adam’s apple. Nevertheless the voice it emitted was a pure baritone. I added it to my collector’s harvest of human oddities.

“How could you tell?” I settled for banter. I would decide later if such nosiness were dangerous. Maybe I could record that voice before I killed her, should that become necessary.

“Can’t get soggy pantscuffs walkin’ the shoulder,” she said. “Or apple leaves in your hat. Never mind, old man Heller can spare an apple or two I figure. There’s a vacuum bottle down by your feet if you want some coffee to wash it down.”

I confess to a keen vice for good coffee, and acceptance spared me the necessity of conversation for a few minutes. My driver drummed her fingers on the wheel in time to Joe Cocker. How quickly things become anachronisms. The van itself, with its matted shag carpet and rainbow decal, was one. I wondered how well known it was in these parts and how long it could inconspicuously go missing.

“What takes you to Albany?” I asked, probing. She waited for a cadence before replying.

“Newsletters,” she said. “I got a print job waiting up there. Hudson River Watch. My class puts it out.” She shifted gears to clear a hill, making the last few yards with what seemed like a bodily effort, then put her hand out as we coasted down. “Denny Mayhew, relic of Earth Day, official college pond wader and wetlands ecologist, known to but a few.”

Ah, but a significant few, I thought, taking her large paw in my glove and giving it a perfunctory acknowledgement. People like this collect disciples. I would have to be careful. “What do your friends call you?” she added after a moment.

I have no friends. An answer, however, was required. “Call me Patch,” I said. “That’ll do.”

“Okay, Patch, you cue me where to let you off. They know you’re comin’?”

“I’m being met.” This was true, though those meeting me were at present several states away.

“Take your word for it. Have the rest of that if you want.”

I decided to let her live, for the moment. She seemed unconcerned enough. The tape clicked to a stop, and instead of rewinding it she punched channel buttons. She seemed to be looking for something, leafing through the tailored voices of newscasters like coats on a rack. I began to speak only to have her hold up a hand, raising the volume again.

“… in Gotham City and the surrounding counties, the manhunt continues for the escaped Arkham Asylum inmate known as the Joker,” came the trained accents.” The Joker apparently escaped in a uniform company delivery truck driven by an accomplice, and is suspected to have fled south from the point where the truck was later found abandoned at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. All uniforms delivered in that day’s shipment turned out to be liberally dusted with… itching powder.” Newscasters can never keep a level tone of voice when reading my press releases. I turned to look out the window, trying to disguise a ripple of delight.

“So there you go, folks, send your surplus calamine lotion along to Arkham. They may need it.” You could almost hear his head-shake. “Seriously, for all my listeners out there on Goodtime Radio, it’s always bad news when the Joker hits the trail. At least he’s headed away from us. But hey, don’t play cards with strangers, okay? And remember Mountain Joe Bullard told you so. All right, now to help you wash the boogers out of your eyes, here’s a classic from Iron Butterfly…”

Apparently my benefactor’s tastes were discriminating. She switched stations and then clicked it off. “Still smokin’ after all these years,” she said, it seemed to herself. “Saw a stand-up at Gotham City Jail last night, three guys had already asked to be moved to high security because they were busted along with him last time he got out. Afraid he’d come through and wax them for letting him down.” She put Joe Cocker back on.

I was still vibrating with inner laughter. Genuine joy is hard to suppress. The van actually slowed for a moment; I felt her, in cautious snatches, looking at me.

“You wouldn’t be headed north out of harm’s way, would you, Patch?” she said softly.

I adjusted the miniature syringe between my glove and my palm. If I had to, I would use it. “What makes you say that?”

“All of a sudden you’re like a Mexican jumping bean. Listen, no blame, like it says in the I Ching. It just occurred to me you might be one a the people real anxious to be where that Joker dude isn’t right now.” She downshifted and braked at the intersection with a road leading to East and West Nowhere. “Look, if it’s like that, I never saw you and never heard of you, just do me the same favor, OK?”

Oh, this had potential. My head thronged with glorious improvisations.

“I’ll get out now if you want,” I said, feigning meekness.

“Pax. Just tell me where you need to be. I don’t mean I won’t help you if I can, in fact I’d admire to.” The van stalled, and she spent a few seconds restarting it. “I kind of collect that guy. Sorta tickles me to meet you, tell the truth.”

Better and better. A genuine fan. I was breathless to hear more. How far could I press her? “You wouldn’t collect him if you had to deal with him," I said with total honesty and a satisfyingly foreboding tone. “I don’t know what you mean by collect, though.”

“Oh. Well, it goes back. My mom, she knew Henry Claridge pretty well. I must have been six, seven when the Joker stole his diamond, wiped him out just for the hell of it. First time I ever heard about him, maybe first thing he did. Mom was broken up as hell. She almost married him once.”

“The Joker?”

She snorted. “No. Claridge. They’d known each other since kids.”

This applied an interesting complexion. No daughter of a woman who had grown up with Henry Claridge needed to make a living by teaching ecology at a freshwater college, or drive a moribund van. I was in the presence of a late-blooming Sixties rebel. It became more and more delectable. I prepared to push buttons.

“Were you listening when he came over the radio that time?” It had been the first time I’d tried that trick, though it was one that amused me for many years afterward. It gratifies me to imagine the stunned expressions of citizens who had thought themselves securely nestled at the broadcast teat.

“Hah. It was too late for me to be up. Let’s see, it musta been just before my tenth birthday that the Bat guy ran him in, ‘cause I’d seen the picture in the papers. Gave me nightmares. Then one a my uncles gives me an old fashion jack in the box for my birthday. I was sure I was gonna be next then. I mean, my mother was still all wrapped up in what happened to Claridge, the grin and all. See that thing pop up, it scared shit outa me.”

This was delicious. I hated to interrupt, but wanted to point out that we were coming up on my destination. I was sorry to conclude our conversation so soon.

“Did they make you keep it?” I said. I savored the possibility of a ten-year-old child waking up to shudder at my near effigy hovering in her playbox. What potential this situation had. Oh, if only I did not need to be so circumspect.

“Nah. They took it back to the shop and got me a kitten instead, you believe that?” I was pointing at a small cluster of rural mailboxes ahead, a landmark which had not changed since I last came this way. She rolled onto the shoulder and braked. “This is the place, I take it.”

“I can go from here.”

“You’re sure you’ll be OK?”

“Sure.” I sketched a salute with one gloved hand to the brim of my hat, collected my things. “What did you call it?”

“What?”

“The kitten. The one that they gave you instead.”

“Oh.” She chuckled, a warm, remembering chuckle, one that cloyed on me like cheap dessert wine. “You love this? His name was Patch.”

I confess I was startled, almost enough to peal forth in my laughter, my true laughter. I squashed it regretfully, counterfeiting instead the insipid warmth that passes for human glue. I raised my hand in farewell.

“Peace, Denny. Thanks.”

“Good luck, Patch.”

She drove off. Ah, I thought, had I dared risk it. Would she ever know how close she had come to collecting me indeed? Perhaps I had laid it on a little too thick. Life’s pleasures are fleeting. I crossed the road into the woods as soon as the van was no longer visible, forcing myself to advance a hundred paces into the trees before dropping my burdens and surrendering to tides of pure delight.

* * *

The rest of the day was anticlimactically uneventful. Perhaps it is as well. Great artistic minds require fallow periods.

The house was such as I’d left it five years ago, shortly after acquiring it from its previous owner, an elderly widower who had taken the trouble to run an ad in the Gotham Courier, declaring his refusal to be responsible for the debts of his no doubt wastrel son. It had taken little trouble to discover that the son was the only surviving relative and less to obtain rights to the property. His demise shortly thereafter was not remarked. I gathered that after his wife’s death no one saw him in town at all, wherever in this quilt of orchards and badly banked two-lane roads “town” was.

The snow of some intervening season, alas, had collapsed the porch roof and broken a window. Birds had nested in the hallway armoire. I removed the nest and hung my suit there, flicking at the creases.

I puttered, collecting equipment for a plan I had in mind; I like to be ready for the prodding of inspiration. I refined, added, discarded, assembling a solar collector I had brought on my last pass through, some television parts, various handyman’s condiments from the workbench, and a mercury switch cannibalized from the bathroom wall. The power, like the telephone, gas, and water, was long disconnected. I had toyed with the idea of having my organization arrange for all to be reinstated through the bank that paid the land taxes, from an account that the state had not yet ferreted out and attached. However, it seemed scarcely fair to make things too easy for my pursuers. Also, the trustworthiness of some of my lieutenants was becoming questionable. It was a problem I was preparing to deal with.

I was glad that my driver had reminded me of the three bumblers in the Gotham jail. I put them on my list too.

I unearthed a Coleman stove belonging to the former resident, located fuel, and founds some cans that had not exploded. I dined alfresco as the autumn sun sank. It was an idyllic scene. A deer stole out of the deepening shadows at the edge of the lawn and regarded me with liquid eyes. I pegged a can at it.

The commotion of its departure was succeeded by a far more rhythmic sound from some distance away. Allowing for necessary paranoia, I still detected footsteps. I shaded my eyes to survey the westward approach to the house. A tall, slouch-hatted figure was silhouetted there.

I move very quickly. I had reached my duffle in the leaf-strewn sitting room and had my gun off safety before the slow tread mounted the porch steps.

“Patch…?” came the voice. Ah, Yma Sumac in buckskins. An idea teased me. I filed it. “Patch? It’s Denny Mayhew.”

I was silent. She should expect no less, after all.

“Patch, hey. I scared you, I’m sorry. I know you’re in there. It’s just me, no one else. I brought some stuff.”

I decided to play it out. The house, after all, was dim, and my last glance in the bathroom mirror before the light failed had shown me tolerably unremarkable. I closed the armoire and approached the door, suppressing hilarity.

“Promise you’re alone?” I called out.

“Cross my heart.”

I opened the door. “How did you know I was here?”

She was standing next to the remains of my dinner – appalling, I grant you, but an improvement on the provisions in Arkham – with a grocery bag, of all pedestrian objects, in one hand and a much smaller sack twisted around a characteristic shape in the other.

“I got to thinking on the way to Albany,” she said. “I know the folks who live on that post road cross the way. Nobody there who’d touch trouble with fireplace tongs. Nice people, but old farts. Other hand, this place been standing empty ever since old man van Riemen turned his toes up. Heard his son was in the slam. So I thought if things were the way they seemed, someone like you might know about it being empty and head up here.”

“You’re a nervy lady,” I said. I was still covering her with the gun, but had already decided to save her for a while. “I could’ve shot you.”

“Yeah, well, I could get hit by a truck.” She was silent a moment, realizing I meant it. “I brought some scratch,” she said in a quieter voice. “I’ll leave it here on the porch if you want.”

“No, come in.” I gestured her into the dim living room, where she found a table in the shadows and set the sacks down. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why this?” I waved at the table.

“I told you earlier, it gave me a kick to help you out. I just had to think about someone with that guy after him.” She moved her hands in a football umpire’s inscrutable semaphore. “I don’t know what you did before now, I don’t care. Don’t tell me. Just let me do this.” She removed from the sack a variety of provisions suitable for taking on a camping trip, or into a smuggler’s cave by a child. It was touching. The smaller bag contained whiskey of the Glen Bogus variety, no doubt cut with New Jersey water. I do not drink spirits as a rule. However, this was priceless and deserved a toast.

“I’ll only take that if you’ll share some with me.”

“A short one. I have to drive.”

There were glasses in the sideboard which had probably been there since the ancient wretch was widowed. I allowed her to pour.

“Oh. Keep hold of this? I imagine you want to keep moving, but if there’s ever anything… Well, you can get in touch with me here.” She extended a small fasciculus of paper still reeking of printer’s ink. Was she a total patsy? I recollected the van, in which I could imagine runaways sleeping on the shag rug, penniless guitarists hitching lifts. I had fallen into a time warp. I carried the pages to the window to catch the last of the fading light:

**Hudson River Watch**

_A publication of the Ecology Seminar of Bell College under the sponsorship of Dr. Denise Mayhew_

_In this Issue: Impact of Toxic Dumping on Community Life _(ah, I could resonate to that)_; The Life Cycle of the Catskill Trout; River Cleanup Update_

_We Gratefully Acknowledge Our Sponsors_

There was a long list, from which a single name leapt out at me. I covered the grin that spread helplessly across my face by pretending to absorb some of the whiskey. It was a rich blend that suggested use as an antiseptic.

“How do you get your sponsors, Denny?” I said. Oh humorless child of the Sixties, I thought, can you hear me smirking?

“Old boyism, I’m afraid. My own special brand. These are mostly friends of my mom’s who wanted to buy a little rose perfume. Gotbucks types. They think of it as Denny’s toy. Maybe it is.” She exhaled largely in the key of neat whiskey. “Maybe I’m just jerking off. It’s what I do, anyway.”

Ah. Now, if I were not careful, would come the great and self-pitying need to be useful to the human race. A common affliction of rich people, hence lists like the one I was reading; with their children, like Denny, redoubled in spades. I resolved that she should not miss her chance to be useful to me. “You know this Bruce Wayne?” I said.

“Yeah. He was in the house a lot for a year or so there when I was little. We were never supposed to play cops and robbers when he was around.” She whuffed again, coughing on what I judged was an unaccustomed tipple. “I never told mom he gave us our best ideas for it.” She chuckled. I disliked her chuckle. It was far too polite a sound.

“Do you ever talk to him now?”

“Sure. He was up here in waders for our first Hudson River Cleanup Day. We had half the rich slobs in Gotham trying to get into the Kingdom Of Heaven by chucking old tires into trucks. He was a peach actually, helped me divert a little part of Fishkill creek so the fish wouldn’t go aground and stink when the rainfall drops. Hard working dude.”

Civic spirit; it makes one’s heart sing. “Does he ever talk to you about knowing the Batman?”

“People always ask him. He gets shy about it, but you can tell he sorta gets off on it. I think it’s the vicarious thrill in his life.”

The sun had fallen completely now; I would have to light a lamp in a short while or be a crass host. I opted for crass. “I’m asking because I had an idea,” I said. “Do you think he’d believe you if you contacted him, told him someone was hiding here that could draw him a map to the Joker? I want to tell someone who has a chance of getting to the Bat guy. I can’t trust the fuzz. They haven’t caught him yet, and well, I just can’t…” I considered embroidering things with a tale of an unjust drug arrest or the like, but forbore; I require no drugs and speak the patois of that subculture rather stiffly.

“Can’t see why not,” she said out of the darkness. “Guess you’re in a hurry.”

“It wouldn’t hurt.”

“I can call when I get back. I’ll charge it to the department, say it was about a seminar he’s thinking of sponsoring.” She stood. “You gonna sleep here? Gonna be cold as an Eskimo’s butt.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“All right. I’ll swing by after my early class tomorrow and tell you if I got hold of him. He might not be in town.” She stepped onto the porch, accurately overturning my desiderate dinner dishes. “Ah shit.” There was no finding them in the dark. She fumbled in the deep pockets of her Buffalo Bill coat and extracted leather gloves, then a surprisingly large flashlight which she shone at the porch floor.

“Never mind,” I said quickly. “Raccoons need charity.”

She took her leave unsentimentally, striding off down the brush-choked driveway with the flashlight beam playing before her. I watched until I was sure she was really leaving, her long-limbed silhouette wavering against the pool of light.

That was when I had my second brilliant idea.

* * *  
Mortimer showed up the next morning early. I sleep little, and was expecting him. I had told him to conceal his vehicle in the woods and approach the house on foot; he did so with absurd circumspection, scampering from cover to cover like an extra in a bad war movie. By the time he had reached the kitchen pump I could no longer contain myself.

Physical labor is not my forte but the progressive fermentation of both my garments and my complexion had left me no choice. I had drawn a large bucket of water, setting a portion to boil on the Coleman stove, and scavenged some well-cured soap from the upper reaches of the house; such is the fugitive life. Now, preparing to bring the bucket’s contents to a bearable temperature. I glimpsed out the kitchen window the crouched figure of Mortimer, one had poised on a gun tucked into his trousers, skittering from the forest across the side yard. Stealthily I carried the bucket onto the porch, which stood a yard above the ground, and waited for him to tiptoe along, hugging the wall as I knew he would. The bucket caught him full in the face, clattering on the stones of what had been a rock garden. He drew, shot at it, and exploded in obscenities as I clung to the railing, howling and snorting.

“That ain’t very funny, Boss,” he said, dripping.

“Oh, Mortimer, it was hilarious,” I corrected him. “Your… your face. Oh my. Mortimer, my dear fellow, don’t be so obviously careful. People three counties away could have told you were on an evil errand.”

“Geez, Boss, you said.”

“Oh, stuff it, Mort. Take that bucket over and fill it up again. Bring it on into the kitchen. There’s a nice breeze. You’ll dry quickly."

He obeyed rather sullenly. Surrounded by a small, widening pool, he watched while I sponged off and repaired my smearing layer of counterfeit humanity, using a mirror harvested from the foyer and angled into the east window. I heard his report as I worked.

“Marco and Boots greased that guy in East Orange like you said. The cops found him fast. We put cards in a couple clubs you useta collect from, and Tinker rigged the speakers at that APA meeting. He says it was a stitch, calliope music comin outa the sound system when that shrink that signed the papers on you last time got up to talk. He wants more money though. He said it was a touchy job. I think you should watch out for him.”

“You wouldn’t tell me what to do, would you, Mort?” I asked him silkily.

“Oh, nah, Boss.” He fell silent and squirmed. I hate squirmers.

“What is it, Mort? Do you need the little boys’ room?”

“Nah, Boss, I was just wonderin’.”

“Yes, Mort?”

“Why keep the disguise? Tinker and the other guys’ll be here tomorrow, we can get the organization goin’ for you again. No more hide and seek, know what I mean?”

“Ah, but I have plans, Mort. They require me to meet a lady. Do you know my normal appearance sometimes frightens sensitive women? One must respect that. I need to be ready to greet her.”

“She comin here?”

“Very astute, my friend. You, of course, will be concealed. I suggest one of the upstairs rooms. Arrange for a long view of the front. I want you to get a clear look at her every feature and movement.”

“Real looker, huh, Boss?”

I tamed the emerald crackle of my brows to a dull brown. “You are so bourgeois, Mort. This woman is a fount of hidden possibility. Unplumbed potential. I need your ability to pluck her from a crowd If need be. Up, up, go exploring. Don’t squelch so, there’s a good boy.”

He ascended the stairs, trying not to squish as he went. It was like watching an agonized matron try to break wind silently. I succumbed to another fit of giggles and went out on the porch to await my guest.

“I didn’t get to talk to him,” she said, snaffling a sandwich in a way that suggested her schedule was tight. “I got hold of his butler. Alfred’s a stiff old crutch but he’s cool. Known him for years. He said I could talk to him about anything I wanted to ask Mr. Wayne, so I laid your question on him. He said he’d transmit it to the mahstah.”

“So?” I suppressed a sharp eagerness.

“Message in my box when I finished with class this morning,” she said. “He can meet me tonight at six anywhere on campus I like. Didn’t know he’s be so hot to trot. I’m supposed to call Alfred back and name a place. I could boogy up here about five and get you, if you really want to talk to him.”

Oh, dear, yes I did. I like to peg at the people close to him: that absurd fire-eating whelp, police Commissioner Gordon (such an outdated parfit knight), la belle Barbara, champion of the wheelchair races. (I read in the Gotham Gazette that she actually won a wheelchair race; it was necessary to obtain a smuggled copy, as the photo-feature was cut out of the one which I was officially allowed to read. Spoilsports.) I like him to reflect on what a dangerous friend he is; to feel what my thick-thumbed analysts would call survivors’ guilt as I single each one out. Oh, yes, I wanted her to bring him.

“Copacetic,” she said. “I’ll call and tell him – say my house? It’s the last one at the bottom of the faculty crescent. Not too hard to find it you’re looking.”

“I don’t know. Suppose someone comes by.”

“My place? Ha. But OK, say the covered bench outside the Ad Building. Everyone’s at the other end of campus chowing down at that hour. I’ll stay out of it, just in case one of my ducklings from the 101 class does pop up. They accost me in the damndest places, I never like to chase em off.”

A perfect saint. “What’s the news?” I asked as she got back in her truck. “The batteries died on my Walkman.” I have never owned such a ridiculous article.

“Some guy in Teaneck turned up on a Ferris wheel dead and grinning like a loon,” she said rather grimly. “I hope you’ve got good dope on him is all I can say.”

“Better than you know,” I said. I was glad to hear they had handled that prescription. He was a reporter who described me as “the grinning maniac who careens around Batman in futile circles.” I felt he deserved a few futile grinning careens of his own.

I waited a discreet period after she had left and summoned Mortimer. Mortimer is not imaginative, but he takes orders, as I have related, with heartfelt attention. I explained his job to him carefully.

“You can walk to your car,” I said when I had given him the necessary supplies and my shopping list. “Don’t try to sneak. You haven’t got the knack.”

* * *

I decided I had had quite enough of Patch. Without further ceremony, when Mortimer had left, I washed him off at the pump. It took considerable pumping and naphtha soap. Stripped to the waist, ignoring my goosebumps, I removed every streak of hair dye and every smear of the matte finish that I had taken down below my collarbones – for a fundamental error with amateurs of disguise is to leave a high-water-mark somewhere on the jaw or neck. I prefer a ring around the collar to detection.

I hummed and savored my solitude, trotting down to the root cellar through the kitchen trapdoor to make some arrangements and upstairs to the bedrooms to prepare for guests. I like attention to detail, and it passed the time. It was three-thirty when my sharp hearing detected Mortimer’s wheels. As working clothes I retained the gleanings of the Beekman Cleaners; I had other plans for my full fig, but for effect’s sake I shrugged into the vest and tailcoat. My tailor had not lost his touch. (Finding spats in this benighted era, in case you were wondering, has always been my worst wardrobe problem.)

Mortimer drives very cautiously. It is, in fact, what brought him to my attention as a reliable transporter of stolen goods. Too many people in this business feel the need for breakneck antics in circumstances where inconspicuousness is profitable. I have proven my capacity for dealing with the spotlight; I need no scene-stealing from my assistants.

Nonetheless, I rode slumped in the back, a tired traveler with hat over eyes.I had seen enough mountain scenery to suffice me.

Dr. Mayhew’s cottage, repulsively vine-covered, stood off the end of a small horseshoe drive on the Bell campus. The forest had very nearly invaded, making our work easier. It was past four, the shadows lengthening. Mortimer coasted to a stop at a place that was out of view of the other houses.

“I followed her like you said. This is it.”

“Well, to work, Mortimer.” I pulled the slouch hat down. In the dusk it would do. Mortimer had assisted me before in making my preferred style of entry; he preceded me up the walk and rapped sharply, waiting for a moment. There was no answer and I expected none. I did not expect the door to be simply unlocked as it was; even on a remote campus, you might think that naivete had its limits.

It was a splendid professorial wreck. The shapeless couch, threadbare rug, weltered books and incongruously expensive artworks bespoke the dedicatedly inconspicuous nonconsumer. A large pine trunk with a brass hasp served as a coffee table. I considered, removed six weeks’ worth of mail ,and tried the lid

“Behind the door, Mort,” I said. “You know the drill. I’m curious to see what my future would be in shipping.”

“Hah?”

“Don’t ask questions, Mort.”

I laid down the small armful of parcels I had carried in and folded myself into the trunk. We had cut it rather close. I detected, as I compressed myself, the choking noise of Dr. Mayhew’s senescent Woodstock van outside the circle. The engine seemed to be exceeding its commission.

“I don’t get this, boss,” Mortimer whispered. “I mean, I know it’s been a long time in the jug, and all. You got an itch for this babe or somepn?”

“Yes, Mortimer. You might say that. Now be quiet.”

She came up the walkway; determined, booted steps. The door swung open, a light flipped on. I waited until her footfalls seemed to be right in front of me, threw back the lid of the trunk, gave her my most winning smile and said, “Boo!”

The response was better than any performer could have hoped. She fainted dead away onto a beanbag chair, dropping a paper sack of groceries and a largish jug of Gallo which shattered across the floor with a vinous reek. I stepped out of the trunk, picking her up under the arms and raising her until her feet trailed the floor. We were almost of a height. Ah, joy.

Mortimer emerged from behind the door, cautiously holding his gun. I gestured to him to pick up her legs.

“Stay me with wine,” I quoted merrily as we maneuvered her toward the stairs, kicking pashed fruit out of the way, “comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love.”

* * *

It was an old house, with a bath such as no one has built for years, in which one can actually move. Mortimer, retrieving our packages from downstairs, rejoined me as I was augmenting Dr. Mayhew’s spontaneous faint with a judicious dose of a mild sedative brought along for the use. I stretched her out on the shag rug, propping her head with threadbare towels that belonged in a car-wash kit. I hung my coat and vest carefully on the towel rail.

“Put those things down and help me with this,” I said, bending to drag the sprawled long limbs out of the greasy buckskin jacket.

“Geez, boss, I don’t know. I never went in for this group stuff.”

“Mortimer, do I pay you to ask questions?”

He subsided and held her head while I removed her flannel shirt and dropped the straps of her assuredly one-hundred-per-cent cotton Fruit Of The Loom singlet. She would certainly never grace a lingerie shoot, unless it were in the _Mother Earth News._

I started at her fingertips and began working in generous dollops of the Powers’ Extra Strength Bleaching Crème and Freckle Remover that Mortimer had obediently found me. The label admonished me to leave it on for only ten minutes to avoid overbleaching. I allowed us an hour and determined that half of that would do. “Start on her other arm, Mort,” I said. “I’ll do the face myself."

I could see that perplexity was killing him, and forgave him when he asked “What’s the game?”

“We are giving this lady a makeover, Mort, that she could never obtain at Elizabeth Arden.”

The ears were very tricky. Fortunately I had experience with my own. She had a blonde’s complexion and had clearly been using sunscreen, and began to fade immediately. The fumes were considerable. I wondered how beauticians bear it.

Mixing the vegetable tint into the advertised twenty-minute haircolor was the most vexing. I guessed as best I could at the proportions. We propped her against the edge of the footed tub. She would have a stiff neck, but she was fit enough to survive it.

“Just think what women go through, Mortimer. It makes you appreciate them more, doesn’t it?”

She was quite a ghastly apparition with the freckle cream slowly congealing on her skin, the foam-filled hair twisted atop her head. She moaned slightly once and I gave her another whiff of Slumberland.

It was five o’clock. I turned on a light and found a hand mirror lying dusty on her dresser. She even owned a blow dryer. I wondered if she calculated for environmental impact.

We rinsed her carefully, keeping her nose clear. The water discoursed of mossy pools and mint jelly. Mortimer supported her head while I plied the dryer. “I wonder,” I said conversationally, “if I might have a future as a ladies’ maid. Carefully there, Mort. This is no ordinary woman. You are holding my second self, my anima, my female soul.” (I read on subjects like this to keep ahead of the doctors at Arkham. One was a Jungian and would not shut up about the Trickster archetype.) “Behold.”

I lowered her gently back onto the towels and rummaged in the sack again. In a wide-spot town like this you can always find plenty of that almost indelible lipstick, a favorite with grandmothers, that gives the impression of having eaten a rabbit raw.

She was muttering gently again. I let her this time, barring the necessary interruption of completing her toilette. She was swallowing and snuffling as I deftly gave her a manicure with the green marking pen. Mortimer, who had finally seen the drift, gazed in honest admiration as I released her hand.

“Geez, boss, I never knew ya looked so good.”

I flashed him my loveliest smile. “Shut up, Mort,” I said. She was too nearly conscious. I replaced my gloves, adjusting the syringe, to whose contents I had made a slight alteration earlier that day. I paused as I prepared to restore her modesty.

“I do prefer to sign my work.” I mulled. “Give me a good slogan, Mort, something you might write on a wall to record your passage. Something with zip.”

He thought a moment, clearly an effort. “Kilroy was here?” he suggested.

“Perfect.”

I wrote it across her meager chest in a flourish of green. She roused enough to focus as I was doing so.

“You bastard,” she said thickly.

I clucked, patting her straps into place. “Is that fair?” After all the trouble I’ve taken here.”

She was shaking off the drug with an effort. “Wh’d you do to Patch? Where is he?”

I turned her face into mine, grinning radiantly.

“I ate him,” I explained.

She was still barely moving, like a winter-drugged housefly. I supported her against the radiator, which was beginnng to awaken with ominous bangs. “I understand you collect me,” I said, tidying the debris of our work into the wicker wastebasket. The ragged towels swabbed up the last drips and spills. “I am generous. Any true fan should have a memento of his hero – some link with him, some identification. I have chosen you for an exceptional honor.” I wrestled off her hiking boots, tossing them down the stairs, and her jeans, while her helpless eyes blazed at me. The essence of humor is the human incapacity to understand what is happening. She was lanky as a spider monkey. I removed my patent garments from the hanger and eased her deadweight legs into the trousers. Whoever dresses Barbara Gordon has a terrible job. She lifted her hand weakly and brushed at me; it thudded back heavily, like an apple from a tree. Mortimer was developing his skills as a valet. He fastened the cuffs while I applied a neat bow knot at her collar.

“Are you ready for your new look, Dr. Mayhew?”

She glared. I could tell her eyes were still not quite focusing. I brought a finger in and out of range until I could see her track it, then held the mirror up to her face. When I lowered it she had turned away, her eyes brimming with tears.

It was an instructive sight. I resolved never to view a tragic film. “There, there,” I said, dabbing her cheeks. “No one so lovely should weep. In fact, I insist on bringing a smile to those cherry lips. Let me swear my devotion – here – with your hand in mine – “ I squeezed the syringe, neatly injecting her with a doctored compound which, while not fatal, would complete our resemblance for a good six hours, which was all I needed.

Her lips curled helplessly. I knew she would see the joke.

* * *

“I’m glad you appreciate my artistry, Dr. Mayhew,” I said as she rubberlegged downstairs between us, her hands secured behind her with gardening twine. (I ask my reader to imagine what kind of woman has a roll of gardening twine on her vanity table, and then judge my conduct toward her if you must.) “You see, to do this fulfills a longing of mine. All these years I have transited through Arkham, probed and mauled by the sweaty hands of forensic psychiatrists. Files thick as “War And Peace” exist under my name. Do these people know me? Not a bit of it. Without my distinctive features, would they recognize the power of my character, the fire in my soul? I am inclined to think not.” We guided her around the applesauce on the landing to the open pine trunk. She glared. I shrugged and extracted my revolver. She stepped in.

“They theorize,” I went on, “about what drives me to crime, all the while as ignorant of my nature as Rover is of his master. Can any of them truly get inside my skin? I doubt it. You, however, have that unique opportunity.”

I padded her with worn couch cushions. It would not do to have the suit frayed against the box’s interior.

“In a few minutes we collect your Mr. Wayne. Never known for his astuteness or courage, he derives, I am told, great personal satisfaction from his association with the Batman. On whose name be, et cetera. No rich fool has ever been able to resist the allure of glamor. What will Wayne think, I wonder, when Mortimer here offers him – for a price – one genuine Joker, gift-wrapped and ready for delivery? He will not be the first of my associates to twist in my hand. If you were Mr. Wayne, would you hesitate? Not at so rich a prize, I think. I am not modest, Dr. Mayhew; oh, dear, no. He has certainly never seen me close up; not while standing still, at any rate. Oh, doubtless he will summon the reserves immediately – whatever that amounts to in this freshwater burg – but we shall be long gone before they realize that they have not me but the lovely–” I ran my hands through her flyaway hair – “lovely Dr. Mayhew. Ah, Denise, I think we were meant for each other. I suspected your true beauty, but I never saw it till now.”

She was still having trouble articulating. She seemed to be making a suggestion, but it did not sound like a practical one. I sighed and pressed her down into the trunk. The hasp held firmly. Mortimer’s car would scarcely accommodate it, but the Woodstockmobile would do perfectly; I retrieved the keys from where they lay on the floor amid a burst bag of dry beans.

“What’s the drill now, boss?”

“You meet Wayne. Tell him you're the person Dr. Mayhew spoke to. Bring him out to the van Riemen place. I’ll have Dr. Mayhew wrapped and waiting; he can assume the locale is bristling with accomplices.”

“You really think he's gonna buy it? People don't walk around with ransom money up their butts. This is crazy, boss.”

"Any number of things could happen. He could come alone. He could come with the law. He could come with money or without. Have you never heard the terms _improv_ or _ad lib_? I haven't had a whirl at the mic in far too long."

"I still think it's crazy."

“Did I ask you, Mortimer?”

He shut up again, but looked surly. I was going to have to do something about him. I counterfeited, however, complete satisfaction while I detailed my instructions; he would do, as I knew, conscientiously as he was told, and for that I needed him. I was quaking deliciously with suppressed laughter as I lowered myself into the splitting driver’s seat of Dr. Mayhew’s vehicle. Even that was perfectly adjusted for me. Ah, what a find she was.

I pulled my hat down on the window side. The pine trunk slid a little on the shag rug as I cornered onto the state highway, but not much.

I took a back route to the van Riemen house, the one I had mapped out for my clue-laying corsairs. They were due late tonight, but as yet there was no sign of their passage. I had just passed from the asphalt to what mapmakers call “unimproved road,” discovering unpleasantly in the process an entire absence of springs anywhere in the vehicle, when a deep-throated rattle came from under the hood. At about the same moment the terrain forced me to brake. The engine chunked and died. I swore, cut the lights and cranked the ignition. Skreeking noises resulted. A rich smell of gasoline rose into the passenger compartment.

“Look out or you’ll flood it,” came Dr. Mayhew’s voice from the trunk. “Stop ramping that ignition, I can’t afford a new battery till next payday.”

I opened the vents, waiting for the carburetor fumes to dissipate. “Do you have a suggestion for me, Dr. Mayhew?” I said quietly when she had been silent a moment.

She offered one. It was even less practical than the last.

“Dr. Mayhew, I am assuming you know how to start this wretched, spavined conveyance. I’m going to let you out of that box and allow you to do so. If you won’t, I think I’ll probably shoot out all the tires before I start on you, just to take out some frustration. Capisc’, Dr. Mayhew?”

There was silence for a moment. I opened the door, took aim, and shot a pin oak.

“Last call, Dr. Mayhew.”

Another moment’s silence. “Let me out of this thing.”

I let her out. I was touched to see that she removed my jacket and rolled up the shirtsleeves before opening the hood.

“Get me that flashlight and the broken tire gauge out of the glove compartment,” she said. I produced those things while holding the gun trained on her. She was unscrewing a wing nut from the top of the ancient carburetor. A thiick exhalation of unburnt fuel rose up. She fanned it.

“Okay,” she said, “get in the driver’s seat and crank it.” With the flashlight in one hand she illumined some unspeakable cavity in the van’s innards, using the broken gauge as a makeshift surgical instrument.

I turned the key. There was a metallic fluttering sound and a choking smoke, but the engine caught.

“Keep feeding it steady,” she said loudly over the noise, and put the flashlight in her mouth to free up a hand for closing up the patient. Surrounded by her helpless grin, it was quite a spectacle; I saved it for reminiscent delights and waved the gun at her.

“As we were, I think.”

“For God’s sake let me leave the lid open.”

“Very well. Understand that you are dead if you try anything.”

She tried nothing. The van, however, took her part by choking down again as I nursed it over the top of a steepish incline. I slapped the dashboard, bruising my palm but producing no effect upon the vehicle.

“God damn it, woman, does it do this every half mile?”

Her voice from the rear was obnoxiously insouciant. “Not if I’m driving. It takes a knack.”

“Then knack this engine back on track, swamp doctor.”

“No fear,” she said. “If it does that more than once you’ve just got to let it bleed off for about fifteen minutes. Cut the lights, for God’s sake.”

I jammed the headlights off wrathfully. I had hoped to be at the house before Mortimer and Wayne arrived; a deserted venue would not add conviction to my story. I considered taking a chance on being caught up by Marco and Boots, who were expected first. No, their ETA was midnight, and Marco’s precision was the reason I paid him; I would just have to improvise. The deepening autumn twilight came down around me.

“We could play Botticelli,” came Dr. Mayhew’s voice from the rear. She was sitting up in the box, working at kinks in her neck. I considered wrapping my hands around her throat as well. Sometimes trying to conserve resources seems too damned bad.

“You’re not laughing,” she said after a moment.

I remained silent. The digital display on her two-buck stickup clock was all but invisible now in the gathering gloom. A raccoon wandered across the road in front of us.

“Why not let me drive?” she said.

“Dr. Mayhew,” I finally said softly, “if you don’t shut up, I’m going to tell your friend Mr. Wayne about those three huge bags of beer cans on your porch.”

“”Recycling,” she said. “Whole college drops those off.”

“Do you do anything that isn’t earnest and noble, Doctor? Tell me a dark and frivolous fact about yourself. To pass the time. It would make you so much more three-dimensional. A secret vice for Hershey bars? A predilection for soap operas?”

“I don’t have a television.”

This is what is wrong with this world; its brightest citizens lack a sense of humor. Being compelled, as I am, to compensate their deficit would make a desperado out of anyone. Also, I find it irksome to be drawn into conversation by someone I have specifically told to shut up.

The requisite time period had elapsed. I tried the engine again. It worked. I think would probably have abandoned my plans and found a humorous use for Dr. Mayhew had it not done so, but her luck was holding. I went slowly this time, avoiding sharp braking, which seemed to anger the vehicle.

I will make a confession now. I confess that in some circumstances silence fidgets me exceedingly. Cobbling my ambitions to the speed of the van made me wish to burst, and cast upon Dr. Mayhew’s silence a character of sulkiness, obedient though it was. I decided to jolly her.

“You know,” I said, “I am considered to be insane. You may have heard this,”

Silence. Yes, she was pouting.

“Yet here we are, laboring through the night in a shuddering heap of rust, when you could well afford even in your self-sacrificing divorce from your family’s money to own something that would go. Will snail darters, or perhaps starving children in Ethiopia, have a better chance because Denise Mayhew, Ph.D., is content to go another day wondering whether her wheels will turn? – Don’t scuffle around so, dear. I’ve still got this gun in my lap. – It’s a joke, Doctor; it’s as futile as praying for peace in a war zone. You are a noble soul who seeks to improve the world by opening her heart to fugitives from storybook vengeance. And what do you get? Me!!” It was impossible not to chortle; glancing over my shoulder, I saw her white face in the moonlight, helplessly sharing my grin. I was approaching the last uphill grade before the van Riemen house.

“This will be ticklish, dear. I’d meant to have you all set for curtain time, but we’ll have to wing this. I’ll be out of the light with this gun trained right on you. If you make the slightest move or say one word it will be the last of your virtuous life. We’ll simply move to Plan “B” and allow Mr. Wayne to rescue himself from us, instead of buying you.” I dropped back to running lights. “You know, perhaps I should be paying you a commission. What would you suggest?”

“Earplugs,” she said.

Heavens be praised, I had awakened her dormant sense of humor. I suppose I allowed myself to be too delighted about it, or I wouldn’t have rolled right into the trap.

Mortimer’s car was parked in the dusty yard. He had made no effort at stealth this time. It had not helped him. I flipped the headlights to bright, shedding a sickly beam over the porch and Mortimer, who was trussed soundly to the supporting post at the right of the steps. I swore and flicked the safety off the gun, half opening the driver’s door, leaving the motor running.

“B – boss!” stammered Mortimer. “Get goin’, you gotta go like hell – “

“Quiet, Mortimer,” came a deep grinding voice from overhead. I grabbed Dr. Mayhew’s flashlight off the seat and swung its beam up to the porch roof, where a cowled face loomed atop a furled cloak large as a a parachute, darker than night. “Surprised?” it said.

Batman was ruining my schedule. Ah well. A true artist has to be flexible.

* * *

“The van’s your style, Joker,” he said. “I hope for your sake the owner’s still living.”

“I’m touched. What could happen to me? I’ll be committed to Arkham for life, right?”

I inferred two things right away. He had come alone, and he was very, very angry. How like him to enter the lists with me this way. It was delicious, even if a little premature. I wondered when he would start with his ropes and batarangs and all the clever little toys he’s adopted over the years.

“Aren’t we past that, Joker? I know this sad sack is the only buddy you've got with you. I could let you fire off your rounds. We could slug it out. You never remember, do you? I’m still faster than you. Bigger, if you need reminding. And believe me, it’s been tough going at times, but I’m still saner.”

“Is that why you’re up on the roof?”

“No,” he said. “I’m up here because you’re down there, and it gives me just the right angle to do THIS!”

Damn the wretched man. He had found the solar battery I had been recharging all day and the floodlight connected to it. I squeezed my eyes shut at the first flash, but they were adapted to the darkness of the woods road, and I was absolutely blinded. My only instinct was to duck and drop to the ground, and even then he hit me like a mattress thrown from a third-floor window. He always does that kind of thing. Nature has given wits to some, to others brawn; I allow other people to move furniture and dislike having it fall on me.

I slapped my palm against him, squeezing. Alas, I remembered too late that it would do nothing but make him smirk. He had knocked the pistol from my left hand almost on impact – I am virtually ambidextrous and prefer the left for spatial tasks like shooting at bats – and I had no sense of where it had gone. Normal sight was returning slowly. The great brute was almost invulnerable to the gouges and punches with which I was at best distracting him, but a lucky chance allowed me to straighten my leg sharply into his midsection. He exhaled abruptly like a whoopee cushion, a novelty which can still be found in my favorite catalogues. I rolled away only to hear a sudden crack as a slug – big, from a .44 or .45 – perforated the rainbow design on the side of the van well above me. I realized only belatedly that Dr. Mayhew had my pistol in her hand (also that she had no idea how to hold one), looking exactly like me and hitting the dirt as she understood why someone was firing on her out of the trees.

I stamped on her hand, recovered the pistol, and threw her headfirst into the cab of the still idling van. The Bat fiend was huffing on the ground, trying to shout without any air. I slammed the van into gear without bothering to shut the door – I seemed to be sitting on part of Dr. Mayhew, though which part was indiscernible – and slewed it across the dooryard. I would cry Foul on him later for salting the woods with what I supposed was Dutchess County’s version of a SWAT team. Over the sound of gears trying not to strip I could hear him, I will admit, regaining his breath to bellow “I told you NOT to fire!”

I was headed straight down the drive, the brush-blocked one that they no doubt considered impassable. Mort’s car wouldn’t have managed it, but the van had hope if it would hold together. It went surprisingly fast when it went at all. I crashed the fallen treetop and attendant debris that crossed the asphalt, scraping the undercarriage loudly and lurching sickeningly, but except for a brief moment when one rear tire spun with a punishing shriek, we went straight through the barrier.

Far away I could hear sirens tearing strips out of the rural silence. They would have a roadblock, perhaps two. Ah, well, over the river and through the woods. I recollected an orchard entry several hundred yards along the road and, killing my lights, swerved abruptly into it. Branches slapped the windshield and thrust in at the vents; I coddled the van over bumps, cursing once when the wheels spun in puddles of deadfall apples. Dr. Mayhew seemed to be attempting a change in position. I took time out to observe that she was head down on the passenger seat with one leg twisted behind the gearshift, on which leg I was partly sitting.

Never be careless with your equipment. I shifted long enough to yank her loose, prodding the pistol into her face to discourage ideas of sabotage.

“Uncapsize yourself, Doctor,” I said. “You’re wrinkling my tailcoat. Do you know what tailors charge?”

“You’re wrinkling my car, you – you animated have-a-nice-day button.”

Perhaps there was hope for her. “Nice try,” I said. “You need to work on the timing.” We bottomed out again – we’d been doing it about every ten yards – and I realized that this time matters were more serious. Clanging noises suggested that some agricultural implement had become involved with the rear axle. There was a punching sound, pleasantly reminiscent of the one the Batman had made when I kicked the wind out of him, and the van suddenly listed.

“God damn it,” she said, “now I need a battery and a new tire.”

“Move very quickly,” I suggested, shoving the pistol up under her chin. I found it entertainingly ironic that of the two of us, she was the one who was smiling.

I had already seen a small canteen in the van, and a Johnny Appleseed walking stick, which I considered but discarded as an encumbrance. It was getting to be fun. Would he come tearing down the fruited aisles in his Bat buggy, perhaps if I were lucky encountering another fruit sizer or branch retractor or whatever sort of device was strewn about this Arcady? Would he hunt me with infrared goggles or call out beagles? I would, I resolved, pelt him with the most fermented deadfalls I could find. The full moon was clearing the treetops, and by its light I found we could scuttle through the galleries of the orchard rather more surefootedly than the van had ever driven. I made for a stone fence forming a boundary with the deeper and more tangled woods, and goosed Dr. Mayhew with the gun.

“Over it, Maybud,” I said. “Carefully. Don’t tear the trousers.”

“How the #@% do you go anywhere in these shoes?” she growled.

Another sad fact of modernity. No one knows how to wear clothes any more. However, she made a fair job of it. Huddled behind the wall, I checked the angle of the moon and made some ballpark estimations. If we circled the orchard in the woods and headed due north toward the road again, we should be in a position to intercept Marco and his men circling south, as per instructions, from Hudson. A few hours would bring them to me. Meanwhile I would retain Dr. Mayhew. I had spent a good deal of time making her up for the evening and I considered that she would still be valuable. If anyone were in ambush at the point where I hoped to flag Marco down, she would draw their fire immediately.

The sirens were closer, but I detected no hint that they had picked up our brief but winding trail. I checked the pistol, tucked it into my Beekman Cleaners jacket pocket and adjusted my hat cheerfully. “Ready for a romantic nighttime hike, Dr. M.?” I said. She was hunkered, nursing the hand I had trampled.

“I don’t know if you sprained it or not,” she said. I noticed that she used less countrified diction when she did not consider herself to be in plebeian company. It was an interesting form of condescension.

“Unless you plan to brachiate, my dear, it’s no problem. Hoppy little feet in gear, it’s time to get there from here.”

“Where’s there?” she said hostilely.

I was not one hundred per cent sure myself, but I turned her due north and pointed over her shoulder. “That way. Hayfoot, strawfoot. Believe me, I’m equipped at the moment to do at least five things that you would like even less than being shot.”

She hopped.

It took almost an hour for me to admit to myself that I was thoroughly lost. It galls me to confess it, but as I have said, I am a creature of the city. The idyllic country stillness was beginning to close in on me like the plates of a ciderpress. The woods were filled with moonlight, small rustling noises of animals, the chuckle of distant rivulets and the sigh of brisk autumn breezes. It was a setting from a fairy tale. I hated it. I would have given my gold watch fob, which Dr. Mayhew was wearing, for one rattle of a fire escape or yowl of an alley cat.

She had regained her composure. As we descended the bank of a small creek – the moon still seemed to be where it belonged, but there was no sign of the road – I heard a sharp snapping noise which I at first thought was a branch breaking, until I saw in a band of moonlight that she was unconcernedly eating an apple. "What ever are you doing, dearest twin?” I asked dangerously.

She exhibited, without turning to look at me, the apple with a large bite out of it.

“Blundens raise that part of their orchard organic. Nice to get one that hasn’t been sprayed now and then.”

I plucked it out of her fingers, conquered my slight distaste, and took a bite. The rest I tossed over my shoulder. She almost jumped to stop me before she remembered I had the gun.

“So you know the territory, my dear? The owners of the land and no doubt the year it was deeded? You keep your familiarity very close.”

“Hadn’t heard you ask,” she said. She managed to look at me. It was pleasant to realize that she still found that hard. I stepped close to her, very close.

“Can you get us out of here, Dr. Mayhew? Think before you answer. At least five different things, remember. I am not squeamish.”

“Out of here to where?”

I do not dwell overmuch on precision. “Let’s say around a mile north of where you left me off yesterday morning.”

“Left you off?” She actually took a short step back to look me up and down in the fitful light. My, she was slow in some ways, Ph.D. or no. I bowed, keeping her covered with the automatic. “You mean Patch – “

“Is me,” I said. Horror infused her expression, all the more delectable for being poorly lit. Her face belonged in one of those brooding films they make in countries with harsh winters.

I smiled at her consolingly and reached to tip her chin more directly into the moonbeam. “I’m really not so bad when you get to know me, after all.” I toyed with her green forelock. Not as whimsically curly as mine, but it would do. “So since we’re friends – after all, you gave me a lift, and we had a drink together – let’s you get me out of these woods. I know you can do it.”

She glared at me unreadably for a moment. It was getting cold, and I like to think that she shivered with the depth of her feelings toward me, but it may have been the night wind. “Okay,” she said. “Just one thing?”

“Whatever you ask, my dear.”

“Lemme finish the apple I got here in your other pants pocket. Seems like you don’t want it.” A fair request; I let her do it. No one seemed to be in our part of the forest, and we still had about three hours, after all.

“Okay,” she said presently, spitting out the seeds. (They were the only thing she did not eat. A woman who gnaws apple cores is a threat to the fabric of civilization, in my opinion. But then, so am I.) “This creek should be Blunden’s property line on the north side. That comes down to the road about a mile along. They ran it through a culvert. Bank of the culvert’s only place around here you get yellow frogwort, something about the concrete. You…”

“Please, let us spare the ecology lecture.”

“ ‘Scuse the hell outa me. I was going to say, you can stay awake all night chewing on that stuff. Indians used it. Thought you might dig that.” She shrugged my jacket a little tighter around her, spoiling the hang of the tails. Well, it was cold. “Get to that point, you’re maybe a mile and a half north of that post road I let you off at. And if you got some reason to believe it won’t be crawlin’ with townie cops, you’re keepin’ it quiet.”

“You mean I just follow the water? Simple as that?”

“Not quite that simple.”

“I am agog. Elucidate.”

“Let me just show you as we go along, okay? My ass is going to freeze if we stand here much longer.”

Woman is Grace incarnate. I considered striking a light, but I might get another wear out of the suit, given a good cleaner and presser. I followed her.

I began to understand what she meant several hundred yards along. The creek first spread out, then went into a deep cut, forcing us to follow it along a precarious, undercut bank. Dr. Mayhew apparently knew the terrain. I could not even see where I was going but relied on the deftness that has saved me from many near disasters in a far more architectural milieu. If she suspected that she could have gotten a long distance away before I could have found the equilibrium to take aim and shoot at her, she gave no sign of it. People who do not routinely handle guns have an overestimated idea of their powers, which suits me.

“Had my orienteering group out here in September,” she said. “Don’t try to hang onto that tree, it’s rotten. There. About a foot down. You’re home. Lot easier now with the leaves thinning out overhead. Now I swear before God, this next part is the only way you can do it, for Christ’s sake don’t shoot me.”

I attempted to see what she was talking about. A complete darkness seemed to lie ahead of us.

“There’s this little trickle runs down here. Gets to be a mutha in the spring. I settled the log a little myself last March, but it rained a hell of a lot last week. Let’s see how we’re doing.”

She knelt and made an apparently satisfactory inspection.

“Won’t hold us both. I’ll go over first.”

I drew the gun and sighted her as best I could while she did. It was an eerie replay of myself traversing the eyries – the rooftops and catwalks – through which the Batman and I have stalked each other. She had not my performer’s grace, but she was surefooted.

“Stand at least six feet away from the end,” I said when she was across. “Don’t even think about coming closer.”

Pistol in hand, I trod carefully across the dark gap. Something made me pause halfway across; probably only that impulse saved me a nasty fall, leaving me with both feet on the log when the small squeaking form darted within inches of my face, actually tipping me with its wing before darting off between me and the moon. On an enraged impulse, I fired at it. The recoil knocked me backward; I twisted, ending belly-down over the log with the breath out of me. The vile rodent had gotten his revenge for that kick, albeit by proxy.

“It was just a bat,” said Dr. Mayhew in a shaken-sounding voice out of the darkness. “For God’s sake. They don’t get in your hair.”

“That’s what you say,” I croaked. The log shifted ominously.

“You okay?” she said.

Her concern was touching. I assessed myself. I was breathless and slightly bruised, dangling over a drop which might have been six feet but might have been many more. I have been okay in astronomically worse situations. I hooked my elbows under the log, attempting to lever myself up to a negotiable position. The log wobbled, and gave a sickening lurch. Laughter bubbled up inside me. I have an affinity for the state of free fall; my ability to plummet without fear has rescued many situations for me. I was prepared to let it rescue this one, but Dr. Mayhew, hissing out a swear word, pre-empted this possibility by darting (quite against my orders) to the end of the log.

“Try not to move,” she said in an authoritative professorial voice. I was fascinated by this performance and stared at her mildly through the moon-vexed murk. “I think the bank’s gotten more undercut. Let me see. Dammit.” She was kneeling; I winced, thinking of grass stains. “Look, I think it’ll work if you stay belly-down like that and swarm it. Soon’s you get close enough I’ve got you. Boogy. I don’t know how long this is good for.”

I considered alternatives for a moment. The most enticing possibilities still lay in reaching the other side. I adhered to the still slightly settling trunk like a snake with angry creditors and coursed along its length, one finger hooked through the pistol’s trigger guard. I could feel the log tilting down as I approached its end; unexpectedly it sank six inches or so. Dr. Mayhew’s face was suddenly close to my own, and I realized that she had hooked her arm beneath the log and was quite literally bracing it by main force. As I closed the last few inches dividing me from the bank there was another lurch, I caught at the brink, the pistol went flying off into dark space, and a hand grabbed me rather haphazardly about the scruff and yanked me onto solid ground. After several moments I heard the clatter of the gun on rocks, a long way down.

“Why ever did you do that, my dear?” I asked, prying loose her spastic grip on the Beekman jacket and sitting up. Altruism such as this disturbs me, implying as it does the possibility of a worse predicament in preparation for the one preserved.

“What the hell was I supposed to do?” she said.

“I can think of several ideas. Gracious, I was virtually at your mercy.” I would not actually go that far, but for purposes of discussion I allowed the idea.

“Just my instinct,” she said, shortly and gruffly. I could all but feel the waves of spent adrenalin coursing off her; I have an acute sense of such things and knew that anyone bothering to inquire would find her pulse rapid but slowing, muscle control nonexistent, hands trembling. Glorious stuff, biochemistry. I took advantage of the trough in her energies to observe the time – it was between nine and ten now – and to spruce up my slightly seam-burst jacket with a spare boutonniere that I had been holding in reserve. One of my more promising neurotoxins, working by skin contact. Symptoms like St. Vitus’ dance. A few years in the cellar might have sapped its potency, but I would gamble.

“Well, Doctor, I have to thank you for an exhilarating moment. Any more little surprises along the way? Snake pits, rock climbing?” She was voiceless and shook her head. “Well then, hi-ho, shall we?”

I gestured her up. She clambered to her feet with the aid of a few of the natural features. I noticed as she turned into the ghostly moonbeams that her smile was slipping and made a mental note to adjust my dosages, waiting patiently while she got her bearings. She tentatively took a step.

“Patch,” she said unexpectedly. “It was dark and you sounded like him.”

“Well, my dear, I am him.”

“No,” she said. “I mean for a moment I just flashed that I was still helping some guy who was trying to get away from the Joker. If you were really asking why.”

“I’m devastated,” I said. We had time for repartee. “Shall we try the crossing a second time? If you can keep your grip on reality, you have a chance to throw me in.” For a moment she made no reply, leading the way along ticklish overhang that brought us back to the bank of the now wider and deeper creek. “Nah,” she said. “He might still be around.”

Doubtless the personal-growth people are at fault for this type of thing. “Are we trying to be deep, Dr. M?” I inquired. “Remember, I have trained with the most assiduous helpniks in the country. I have been bludgeoned with noble concern. I know enough of the technique to reduce you to howling wretchedness upon the instant.”

“Knock it off.”

“The gun was only one of my weapons, dear. Don’t take chances. I might start riffling through your ghosts.” I paced the path behind her, now more easily seen as the moonlight penetrated thinning branches. “Miss Denise Mayhew, debutante, perhaps? Or Denny getting bailed out of a dope rap by the folks? I’m sure I could ferret them out, given time.” There was a deep rushing sound as the creek below us gathered velocity, dumping as she had said into a large-bored concrete culvert that crossed under the road. She paced back and forth at the edge of the bank until she found what she wanted, turned, and lowered herself down a small scree to skip along stones until she reached the culvert’s mouth.

“It’s getting bitchy cold,” she said, choosing to entirely ignore my sprightly conversation. “We could wade through but I don’t really lust for it. There’s solid footing this way.” I observed the route she took hoisting herself up to the level of the small bridge crossing our creek – I was beginning to wish to give it a name – and stopped as I saw that she had paused, belly-down, with her head at the level of the road. She was cursing under her breath. I never knew a Ph.D. with such a vocabulary. It must be the times.

I crept up close, tucking my fingers behind her jaw in a grip that can hurt unbelievably, done right. I gave it just about ten per cent; she squeaked, then subsided. “What is it, my dear?” I whispered [ah, sweet nothings in the moonlight]. “Have we entered enemy territory?”

She looked at me sidelong and pointed down the road. Almost out of view around a curve a car was idling, its lights off but a small lawman’s bubble flicking out blue light on the dash; a characteristic hick phenomenon. I must have been more shaken than I realized by my highwire experience. I should have picked up on that.

“Bob Quinn,” she said. “Dutchess County Sheriff. Looks like him and his boys are on your case, and if you care to know, those Elrods are the kind to shoot first and ask questions later. Looks like he's camping just north of state 16 -- that's the back way to Red Hook. Likes to do drunk stops there.”

“In that case, you’d better not attract their attention dressed like that, my dear?” I said. “But you weren’t thinking of that, now were you?”

“Are you kidding?” she said with surprising vehemence. “I’d puke and die before I ever hollered Help to that son of a bitch.”

I almost released her neck. “Well, then, we’ll just have to find the low road around him, won’t we?” I said. “That is, if you have the strong feelings about non-violence that I would suspect.”

“Non-violence?”

“Surely you don’t think that the loss of a gun pulls my sting, do you?”

She raised her hand in its glove – my glove – to her lips and seemed to be debating. Good heavens, was she beginning to see things my way? I enjoyed the spectacle of, virtually, myself musing in the moonbeams for a moment before letting my fingers flutter to remind her that I still had some of her more delicate nerves hostage.

“Dammit, stop that. Look, if I try something here, I mean out of your book, will you take the rap?”

“Out of my book? And how would you set about that?”

“Why not wait and see?” she said. “I’m sure you’ll think of something if you don’t like it. If it works, you get past him. Once you’re safe –” her dark voice rasped dryly in her throat “ – you let me go. Deal?”

Well, well. She was proving gamer than I thought. I decided to slack her leash a bit and see what she had in mind. “Very well, dear. Give it a whirl." I released my grip. She reached into the inside pocket of my tailcoat and produced a third apple.

“Missed my dinner,” she said. “Think on I wish I was eating this. Stay back unless you can keep from making noise.”

Close to the ground, quite soundlessly, she crept up the shoulder towards the police vehicle. I amused myself meditating on the different things I might do to her if she played me false, peering to get a sight of what she was up to. She came in very close under the exhaust pipe – I wrinkled my nose in sympathy – and seemed to be doing something to it or to the bumper. I was contemplating the significance of this when she scuttled back next to me. However much she was afraid of me, clearly there was something in this situation that attracted her more than an escape attempt -- that, or she was not suicidal.

“Okay,” she said. “Give it ten or fifteen minutes. That fat bastard. He’ll be too occupied to notice we’re in a country mile of him, and that’s what you want, right?”

“What exactly have you done?”

“Blocked his tailpipe with the apple. Creep. Goddam thing needs a tune so bad anyhow it hurts, and he sits there belching smoke out into the air. Should overheat pretty fast. Goddam airplane engine under the hood. Thinks every Duck County sheriff needs a V-8 Interceptor. Either the radiator or the block’ll blow.”

“My good doctor, to what do I owe this sudden spirit of helpfulness?”

“‘ ’Cause that buzzard breath asshole’s had it coming ever since I was a teaching assistant,” she said. “Planted drug busts. Harassment. Aaaah we’re getting there. Listen.”

An alien burr had entered the distant engine sound. I could just make out the sheriff, indeed a portly individual, replacing something in his belt to pop the hood.

“He likes to call himself the Mighty Quinn. Like the song. He’s so vain, he thinks it’s about him. Oh stand back, you stupid mofo…”

“Cold feet, Doctor? This is just beginning to entertain me.” I pulled myself up to the level of the bridge. “Do you do this often? How safe is a ringside seat?”

“Not very – there she goes!” hissed the good Doctor, actually grabbing my arm in her enthusiasm. A spume of steam shot from under the hood as overheated fluids forced an exit, followed by a stinking cloud of partly consumed hydrocarbons. There was a loud yell and a cascade of unimaginative obscenities.

“I’d say he was distracted, wouldn’t you?” sputtered Dr. Mayhew. A genuine smile, wider than the one my attentions had painted on her, was closing her eyes to slits. “Oh, God, if I could see his face. A hundred bucks for one look, I swear.”

“Let’s go, dear.”

She was curled in on herself with delight but after a moment managed some composure, and led the way along the shoulder, hanging back in the small mowed strip between gravel and forest. Unfortunately she had not the benefit of my long experience at blending crime and comedy. Passing the expiring vehicle, now veiled in mephitic smoke, was too much for her; she suppressed a laugh by converting it to snorts. The sheriff stood away from his car, evidently intent on making a perfect target. “Who’s there?” he barked.

“Oh, hell,” breathed Dr. Mayhew. “NYAA na-na NYAA NYAA! Whooo hoo, hahahah!” She scampered ahead of me, reaching an incline and rolling down it. The sheriff’s head snapped around, and he fired from the hip at the noise.

“Come out with your hands on your head or I shoot again! Who the f – k is it?"

I had not been idle. “Me,” I said mildly from behind him, tapping his shoulder to make sure he got the picture. I tipped my hat and gave him one immortal moment to admire my countenance before venting my boutonniere at him. He stared, wild-eyed, and fired a single shot in a random direction before the choreic movements disabled him completely.

I pried the hogleg from his fluttering fingers. It was, indeed, a .44. He probably fancied himself as Clint Eastwood.. I restored the safety, not wishing to shoot off my foot, and relieved him of some of the rest of his equipment before he could hurt himself with it.

The darkness seemed to have consumed Dr. Mayhew. I sighed, shrugged, and pressed the cannibalized TV remote in my jacket pocket. A gasping yelp sounded at about two o’clock.

“I can keep that up, dear. And believe me, I’d find you before you got the shoe off. Nice about the spats. Just come back here to uncle Joker. He has something for you.”

A remote version of my favorite gag had been knocking around my head for a while at Arkham. It had occurred to me while I was dressing her to include it as a sort of electronic hotfoot. Old chestnuts are the best, I say.

“Turn the bugger off,” came her voice from much closer. “I can’t put the foot down. And it’s wet out here.”

“No fear. Just toddle up the bank, there’s an angel.”

Her eyes were sullen. Poor thing, after she had done me a favor. They changed to something more appalled when she saw the flippering form of Sheriff Quinn on the roadside.

“How long does that last?”

“I don’t know. I never stuck around to find out. Want to?”

“Well, you’re not exactly going to sell me to Wayne now, are you? And what am I going to tell anyone that they don’t know already?”

“Oh, but Dr. Mayhew, you think me merely mercenary. I do not simply consult my advantage. You see, I’m beginning to feel a connection – a deep connection with you.” I stepped closer, enjoying the wary shifting of her feet. “I feel as if we were linked. In fact” – I snapped the remaining open bracelet of Quinn’s handcuffs around her wrist before she could jerk it away – “we are.”

She really did burst into tears then. “You bastard!” she wailed point-blank in my face, jerking her wrist about (and mine with it, alas) as if that might disengage her. “You doublecrossing – murdering – bastard!”

“Shh, dear. Shh.” It was wonderfully diverting; Fate send us these entertainments in our dull hours of waiting. (Marco and his friends were still almost three hours away.) “Someone might hear you.” I jolted her foot again, lightly. She shut up like a box but continued glaring at me, tears rolling at intervals along her paperwhite cheeks like slow condensation. “You remember, I promised you that you would learn what it’s like to be inside my skin. You’re beginning to pick up on it, don’t you see? Life doesn’t let us go, Dr. Mayhew. We can twist and turn, we can bribe it with selfless deeds, but Life does not release us from its plans for us. Why should I be kinder? As for the question of _cui bono_, does anyone benefit when, existentially, we suffer? I’m surprised at you – an academician, when there’s a whole literature on the matter. Life is absurd; it makes us dance like carnival bears for no reason at all. I have heard its music, and I choose to embellish on its cadences rather than be dragged after them. It won’t let me go, Dr. Mayhew; I learned that long ago. So I won’t let you go. Why, you’re more than family to me.”

I held up our braceleted wrists before her.

“Are you a film fan, Dr. Mayhew? I prize the inventors of home video over the discoverers of penicillin. Do you know a little gem by Hitchcock called ‘The Thirty-Nine Steps?’ He drew it from an adventure novel with no part for a starlet, so he forced her into the plot by the direct method of handcuffing her to the hero and having them flee over rough country together. I always wondered if that would really work. Let’s give it a try.”

I adjusted my hat and glanced down to where the porcine Quinn was still sunfishing on the shoulder. “And don’t worry, dear. Whatever comes of this, your secret is safe with me. It’s too rich to think they’ll never imagine your hand in it. It will warm me on cold nights like this one.”

* * *

I suppose I should have hung back from the road, but the simple fact is that the mere feeling of the tarmac underfoot consoled me. I had had enough of mud slicks, rotten logs, decaying apples and bark dust up my nose to last me a lifetime, and it was still only about ten o’clock. So, in pressing northward toward the interception point I had decided on, I led the way along the shoulder, tugging a flagging Dr. Mayhew behind me. Traffic on this road was all but nonexistent (when it happened, there was ample warning; I pulled us back into the scrub). I had, though, heard a helicopter in the distance, but was positive that I could strike cover before such a clumsy instrument of search came close enough to spy me. Hence I suspected nothing when a silent shadow blinked across the moon – after all, I had already had material proof that bats inhabited these woods. I had forgotten about that damned hang glider of his.

The light nearly blinded me. When he likes a trick, he sticks with it. The annoying thing is that he seems to get away with it, while I’m scouting around like any good comic for fresh material. The difference between an artist and a hack, I suppose. I whirled, trying to escape the dazzle until I could recover, incidentally dragging Dr. Mayhew after me. So much for Hitchcock. She stumbled and went down on the gravel, throwing me off balance; my only consolation was that I landed on her heavily. Curtains for the suit, I supposed. He made another low pass, the corny batwing shape of the glider razoring across my field of vision as it cleared, and was suddenly on his feet in the roadway about fifty yards away. Out of sure firing range – I’m good with guns, but not a sharpshooter – at least not with an unfamiliar .44 while a gasping professor of ecology yanks at my breaking wrist with a Dutchess County Police handcuff.

“Could you get that damned light out of my eyes?” I called irritatedly. “It’s upsetting me, and you know how people sometimes get hurt when I’m upset. The Arkham doctors say it’s my form of self-medication.”

The glider was idling, if that is the word, above us. He seemed to have anchored it to a Deer Crossing sign. This is the kind of thing that never gets into the newspaper stories about him. He made a small gesture and the dazzle went away. “No one gets hurt,” he said.

So savory, the barely controlled fury in his voice when he speaks to me. It’s some of the truest applause I get; you could call him my best audience. Did he hope to frighten me with that scarcely leashed rage? It merely warmed my blood, which I admit needed it on a night which was beginning to weave mists out of one’s breath. I had gotten a firm grip on the gun. I tickled Dr. Mayhew’s floating ribs with it.

“Stand up, dear,” I said. “Be visible. Raise our hands. Perfect.” I let her hold the pose while I called gaily to him.

“You’ve got to stop following me around, Bats,” I said. “People will talk.” I edged Dr. Mayhew around, keeping the moon behind us. If our faces remained in shadow it should keep him pleasantly confused “Have you missed me, is that it? No one around Gotham to give you a good game?”

He was silent. I could tell he was trying to second-guess me, shifting his weight in a slight crouch at the middle of the roadway.

“Or did Beau Brummel Bruce get right on the line to you? That must have been it. Not much in the way of stones, eh, Bats? I thought he’d rise to it. Even Nancy Drew had more enterprise.”

“Easy, you rude sucker,” murmured Dr. Mayhew through gritted teeth. “I liked Nancy Drew.”

“Shut up, dear,” I stage-whispered. “What about it, Bats? Come to take me home to the good old Asylum? Got to catch me first, you know. And anything that happens to me happens to an innocent party, here. You just hate that, don’t you?”

“Joker,” he called – his voice vibrating deliciously with fury – “if that’s Professor Mayhew with you, let her go. Let me take you in. Quinn’s posse will be here in a minute. I radio’ed them the location, and believe me, my worst doesn’t touch what they’ll do to you and call it an honest day’s work.”

“Serious Nazis out here in the sticks, eh, Batley? Well you know, I believe I’ve kept some tough company a time or two. Maybe we’ll just see what they can do.” I staged a little tug of war with Dr. Mayhew. “And I think I’ll keep my native guide. She knows the names of all the nuts and berries.” I cackled in spite of myself. “You won’t believe what I inspired her to do with an apple!”

“You rat-baster, you said….” growled Dr. Mayhew.

“Don’t get your skivvies in a bunch, Dr. M. Just start backing away, yes, very nice. I’m watching him, you watch the woods. Run when I say to. I promise you’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

The moon, flicking in and out of a passing cloud drift, lit him incompletely. About that cape of his. You can’t see what he’s doing; it’s not just for effect. I was steeled for another flash – combat light sticks, probably – when a distant faint noise drew my attention. Another flicker passed the moon, then several in succession. I had just realized that the lone bat I’d potted at in the woods must have an enormous family, when a small rigid batwing shape came flying directly at Dr. Mayhew. At that range, its force was spent, but it caught in her – well, in my suit. I won’t say it made a sound, exactly, but some vibration came from it that set my teeth on edge, and as you can imagine, this involves a lot of teeth and edges. It seemed to have exactly the opposite effect on the cloud of little winged beasts coiling between us and the moon; they streaked down toward it like smoke being sucked into a draught. Within seconds the little wretches were all around our heads, stinking and squeaking. And they say I have a vicious sense of humor.

I fired randomly into the mass of them. It didn’t seem to make a dent. He’s fast; he was just about on top of us before I could cock the gun again. (Quinn must have been a gun fancier, or thought he was Wyatt Earp.) Leather wings flicked my face; clutching at Dr. Mayhew’s shirtfront like an over-eager prom date, I scrabbled out the gimmicked batarang, puncturing myself in the process, her cuffed arm flapping and jerking as she tried to tell what I was doing. Hampered by the cuffs, I could only fling it a few yards, but at least it was off of us. I had one clear shot at him – as I said at the beginning, I prefer to keep him around, so in situations like this I try to merely wing him. I missed, partly because Dr. Mayhew was still colliding with bats. Damn Hitchcock; obviously I had invoked the spirit of the wrong movie. The handcuff key was in my Beekman jacket pocket. I resolved on a divorce as soon as we were in cover. Sirens yowled, punctuating the urgency of my predicament. Oh, my, I was beginning to enjoy this.

A long, light rope coiled out of the diminishing storm of bat bodies, snaking expertly around Dr. Mayhew’s knees. She sat down hard, with a sound exactly like a kicked dog. Headlights rounded the curve beyond us, red flashers pulsing, tires squealing – it was beginning to sound like home – and my Prince of Darkness, emerging from the crowd of his little subjects, flung himself on the professor, pinning her arms over her head before she could get her breath, for example to say “He’s the Joker, not me.” Of course, this maneuver dragged me down with her, so that we were all thrashing around in a heap on the asphalt. My hat went rolling. We were suddenly nose to nose, he and I. I smiled brilliantly, ignoring the cold air on my sensitive tooth (it’s the right lower wisdom), and shot off the left ear of his cowl before he could notice that I was the one with the gun.

If the report deafened me, you can imagine what it did to him. Even so, I only had a split second to roll away from him off the road, taking the professor with me in a prolonged over-and-under career that fetched up a few yards below the shoulder. Red revolving beams from the arriving cop cars scythed over our heads. I fired randomly in their direction, hoping to cause at least confusion and maybe some broken glass, and simply picked up Dr. Mayhew around the middle as I pushed to my feet and bounded into the trees. I don’t like moving furniture, as I said, but there are times when you have to carry your own props if you’re going to do theatre.

I hauled and dragged her about thirty feet before she got too heavy. She was swearing at me anyhow, kicking to get loose; I dropped her unceremoniously, more or less on her feet, and gave her a shove in the small of the back, using a fine disregard for the way I was wrenching her wrist around. We were into the woods perhaps another ten or twenty paces before I noticed she was flagging seriously. We had just gone down a small decline, and the sound and light show from the road was still fitfully perceptible. There was one of me, and probably about twenty of them; not counting the Batman, they were hopelessly overmatched. I could afford to slow down for a moment; I turned to Dr. Mayhew, who had taken on an expression of bravely controlled pain. I admired it silently. If anyone ever broke her down, it would be a hard, slow job. I was sorry there wasn’t more time.

“I think my ankle’s sprained,” she said in a small white voice. “Maybe broken. I can’t keep this up. Let me loose.”

She was breathing convincingly, tightly and on the top of her lungs. The rich miasmas of fear and alarm and urgency coming off of her were so dazzlingly mixed that one could barely disbelieve her.

I sighed and rummaged for the handcuff key. Damn. Not there. All that scuffling. It was probably back on the potholed asphalt.

“Well, dear,” I said, “it looks like this is curtains. I mean, you’re much too heavy for Uncle Joker to carry any further, and we haven’t been to see the monkeys yet.” The moon laid slices of pearly light across her blanched features. There was a scrape on one cheek where she had become acquainted with Route 9G. “Now the only question is, what condition are you in when they find you? I mean… after all… you have had an experience vouchsafed to few. You have been me. You’ve even taken a body-slam from the Batman. After this, really, what is left in life?”

I had been stealing the still warm muzzle of the sheriff’s revolver up along her throat as I said this. She sucked in a sharp breath and jerked her head up a half-inch as it touched the undersurface of her chin, right at the spot where you hold a buttercup to see if someone likes butter. Other than that she was still, and silent, staring down at me over her lower lashes. The slight movement had brought her face up into a wide band of moonlight, and I could see the shadow of every fine downy hair on her dry cheeks. It was perfect; the moment, the lighting, the silence.

I gazed at her steadily, preparing to write _finis_, but not before I had stamped every detail of the picture on my memory. In my life there are so very many cold, empty nights. And what could her existence, anyone’s be after this? An anticlimax. I could do no better by her. I actually began to squeeze.

Do you know, I couldn’t do it. Because as I stood there beside her, gazing into her eyes in that most intimate of all moments, she slowly, almost helplessly, began to smile. Was it a last fading effect of my drug, potentiated by her fear or the pain or her heart’s racing? Or did she truly see the humor, the final absurdity of it all? I suppose I’ll never know. But she grinned broadly at me, her green-dyed hair spitcurling on her damp forehead, her lips stretched back over thirty-one teeth and a gold crown, and I felt the gun faltering in my hand. It was my own face I was looking into, and my knees went oddly rubbery with revulsion as I almost felt the bullet blooming up under my own chin, the breeze of a phantom blast inside my skull.

She did not move. I lowered the gun.

“Very well, dear,” I said. “Game’s over, all in free. If I should bugger this one up, think only this of me: there is a corner of the old Asylum that is for ever Joker.”

I planted the muzzle of the gun against the chain that linked our wrists, pinning it to a tree, and shot it in two. Dr. Mayhew’s eyes rolled back and she sank to the forest floor.

They wouldn’t miss that. “Tally ho, the fox!” I shouted back over my shoulder as I skipped to the top of the rise ahead, looking down briefly into the inky dell beyond before charting my course across it. Somehow, without an interval, I was flying down into it, arms clamped around me from behind. Was he really supernatural after all? Nobody that big could move that quietly – not even him – could they? They couldn’t. The hand that snaked around my gun wrist wasn’t gauntleted, and the weight pinning the small of my back was only about the equal of my own. I would have commented, but my face was pressed into the forest floor, while the hand slammed mine repeatedly against a stone that I had just missed denting with my head. The third or fourth blow caught the nerves inside the wrist. I dislike dwelling on failures; suffice it that my next clear memory has me drawn back in an _arc hysterique_ from the thick carpet of pine needles, Dr. Denise Mayhew’s fingers fisted in my hair, Sheriff Quinn’s revolver more or less in my ear. I gazed back across the several yards of broken ground she seemed to have crossed silently and instantly.

“Your ankle…”

“I lied,” she said. Then she deafened me with a full-throated bellow. “Police, goddammit! Bats!!! Hudson River Watch Exclusive!!!” My tentative ploy of sagging in her grip, hoping she would relax it, cause her to jam my midsection against the ground with her knee. Lights swam in front of my eyes, and it was a moment before I recognized them as heavy-duty flashlight beams and not an ornament of hypoxia.

“You won’t shoot,” I panted. I tested a few muscles. My left hand was useless; for all I knew she’d broken something.

“Want to keep talking and see?”

The right was okay. Maybe she thought about that too. She slid across me, running the muzzle of the gun down my spine.

“You’ve been showing me your point of view, remember? It’s getting easier. Don’t forget, I’ve collected you for years. I think I like this gun right here. You could try wheelchair racing with the Commissioner’s daughter. I hear she’s a threat.”

Woe and misery. Shouts were coming closer.

“And I’ll send you a big box of apples every year at Thanksgiving. Think how popular you’ll be with the screws.”

Feet pounded over the rise, the lights coming with them. Dr. Mayhew stood – on the backs of my knees, I’m afraid – still hauling me up by the nape. Despite the pain, I expended my last mote of effort and dropped my head forward. “All yours, boys – “ Dr. Mayhew began, and then a loud crack! sounded overhead, and she went flying off me.

Too, too easy. They always think they’ve outsmarted me much too soon. I rolled, rose, sprang, counting on the confusion of the moment to save me as they streaked toward Dr. Mayhew prostrate in the leaves, her – my – jacket showing a sudden dark stain at the point of the shoulder. If I’d seen the Joker standing over a prone figure, brandishing a revolver, I’d have shot at him too.

Of course, if you’re not the type to shoot at people, perhaps you take a different perspective. I had barely begun to laugh when he slammed into me. No mistaking who it was this time.

“Oh, hell,” I said. Better him than them anyway.

I let him tie me to the tree he’d swung down out of. With only one hand working, it was time to fold.

“How long were you up there?” I said.

“Long enough to enjoy it,” he replied. Now isn’t it just like him to let me wonder what precisely that meant.

* * *

The gendarmes were clustering, abuzz, around Dr. Mayhew, further lights being brought up, one shining directly on her as a mufti deputy who had probably once taken a Red Cross course cut my jacket, vest and shirt away from her shoulders with a hunting knife. I was sure he was getting all ready to tell the family about it later (“and I had the training, see, so they asked me to do it, see, and I took my knife out, and did I want to just use it on him? You bet, but I’m a lawman…”)

There was a general silence. He had exposed the signature of Kilroy.

“Suck a duck, Effinger. Who knew. He’s a lady.”

“Brody Effinger,” came a weak but gritty voice, “that’s the first time you hit anything you shot at since your wedding night.”

“Aw jeezly Christ, it’s Dr. Swamp.” (Now there was a sobriquet to make Hugo Strange gnash with envy.) “Christ, Doc, what you doing in that getup?”

My Knight, having tied me snugly – he’s thorough, I’m afraid, despite being restrained by principles – moved to crouch atop a flattish boulder behind the small group, holding aloft what looked like a small sodium-arc lamp that served the twin purposes of illuminating the scene and leaving him only a vague shape in the darkness. Probably that was what he’d blinded me with on the road – a soothingly urban, pinkish glare without shadows. “Now do you know why I asked you not to shoot?”

“I’m touched, Bats,” I called.

“I could change my mind,” he replied without looking my way. Cavalier bastard.

“Looks like she’ll be okay,” said the paramedic type with the Bowie knife. “Creased her shoulder, but missed the bone, looks like. Effinger, make it easy on us all. Turn that gun in till Bob can sort this out. You dint kill her, but you were lucky.”

“What the hell, Gary, she got that suit on, ain’t she? Who’d go around like that? We still don’t know how he gimmicked the car either. Or Quinn.”

“County’ll buy a new car. Shoulda five years ago. And Quinn was comin out of it when I checked him. Hold still a minute, Doc, this is gonna hurt.”

“You’ll find a bottle of whisky back at van Riemen’s,” I said. “Excellent disinfectant.”

“You’re askin’, buddy,” said Effinger.

“Believe me,” said the Batman. “My old acquaintance here is fully capable of anything that’s been done tonight. You’ll find a cheap party novelty in his lapel. Treat it very respectfully.”

One of the country boys swung his flashlight my way, studying the mentioned ornament. “Hey damn, Gary, she may be wearin’ his outfit, but he’s got my spare fall jacket. Look, right here’s where Albina darned the pocket. If he traded with Dr. Swamp how’d he wind up with that?”

“I’ve seen the professor’s house,” overrode the Batman smoothly. “There’s every sign Dr. Mayhew was forcibly abducted. I’ll watch my friend while you carry her out. I’d suggest North Dutchess General.”

The dialogue had begun to cross like freshly dropped pickup sticks..

“These bozos aren’t carrying me anywhere,” said Dr. Mayhew, sounding a little stronger. “And will you stop looking at my chest?”

“Sorry, Doc. You gotta admit it’s unusual.”

“There’s enough of us,” said one of the others. “We can transport the both of em --"

“Radio downstate to Arkham, then. They can pick him up.”

“Now wait a minute. I don’t know how they handle jurisdiction down there in the big city, Mr. Bat, but he did his damage right here -- ”

“I refuse,” I interposed, “to be taken to an ignominious county holding tank.”

“You’ll go and like it,” said Effinger.

“Check this,” said Gary, who was holding the doctor’s wrist as they taped a bulky bandage into place. “Handcuffs. Looks like she got the gun and shot em loose. Nice goin’, Doc.”

“Quinn’s cuffs were missin.”

“We can get her statement at the hospital,” said Gary. A deputy took charge of me, fitting an intact pair of darbies against which the remains of Quinn’s rattled like gypsy finery. Gingerly he frisked me, removing the boutonniere and dropping it in an evidence bag before rifling my, or rather Deputy Effinger’s pockets.

“”Plannin’ on tunin’ in Letterman?” he said as he removed the remote.

“Don’t handle anything he has in his pockets – “

“Yip!” said Dr. Mayhew.

“I never watch Letterman,” I said. “He’s a second-rater.”

“Left shoe,” Dr. Mayhew was saying, now leaning on Gary to waggle the offended foot at Dutchess’s finest. Effinger and the other deputy began to march me away, having emptied my pockets and cuffs gingerly into several freezer bags.

“A good show, doctor,” I saluted her as we passed, sketching a bow as well as I could with them frog-marching me. “Credit where credit’s due.”

“Shut up, funny guy,” said one of them. “You done enough for one night.”

Dr. Mayhew braced herself against the medic's arm. “Not a patch on what he could have done,” she said very steadily. She didn’t drop her eyes from mine. You could still see the top edge of Kilroy’s autograph above the mutilated remains of my suit.

I meowed loudly. Let them try figuring that out.

“Quinn’s car,” the Batman called after them. “You’ll want to secure it for the forensics experts.” I wondered If they knew what that meant.

He remained on his perch as the lights wavered round the woods from the hands of our sturdy little band. I had a view of him long enough to see him withdraw something from under his cloak and peg it neatly and silently back into the trees.

I honestly do believe it was an apple.

I was still laughing when they stuffed me into the cage car.

* * *

In some ways it’s homey back in the old asylum. Over the years, they’ve learned not to provide me with anything that could be disassembled into inimical component parts, so that my quarters have a clean, extruded, Scandinavian look. It’s rather restful.

Predictably, they’re censoring my newspapers again. However, Harvey Dent, who at least thinks that he owes me a few, has always insisted on receiving two copies, and they humor him; he manages to get the spares to me.

It looks as if Mortimer intends to turn state’s evidence. Dolt. Apparently he thinks prisons are safe. He should have taken the example of Boots and Marco, who denied everything when troopers met them at the state line; they pled guilty only to transporting stolen sound equipment. Apparently Tinker had met with a misfortune. Marco has just the right amount of initiative.

The article I liked best, however, was in the “Education” section of the Gazette. My negative clipping bureau patrols primarily for the lurid and local, and managed to miss this one completely.

** _BELL COLLEGE ACQUIRES OFF CAMPUS LAND_ **

_HUDSON – Under the recently enacted Seized Assets Act, the house and estate of Joshua van Riemen, near Hudson, was made available for purchase at below-market rates last month. Bell College, a nonprofit institution eligible for financing under the Act, has moved to acquire the property._

_Bell President Ferman Brack, recognized for his pioneering work with the finances of small colleges, has tentative plans for an off-campus museum lab highlighting the colleges contributions to historic preservation in the Hudson Valley. Parts of the facility would be set aside for grant work in botany and ecology, including an ongoing environmental project spearheaded by the college’s field ecologist in residence, Dr. Denise Mayhew._

_Dr. Mayhew played a role in the state seizure of the property late last year when her vehicle, the “rainbow” van familiar at river cleanup projects over the last three years, was stolen during an escape attempt by the Gotham-based career criminal known as the Joker._

_Inquiries concerning hearsay accounts which involved Dr. Mayhew herself in the escape as an unwilling accomplice met with no comment._

_Students at Bell College subscribed to a collection for the repair of the “rainbow” van, which is expected to be a curiosity draw at the museum lab’s opening._

It ought to take a while before the old dump is ready for public exhibition, and that gives me plenty of time to see to it that the repairs involve a detail man who can give that damnable vehicle a creative paint job. I wouldn’t want her to forget my face, after all.

Really, it was an exhilarating adventure – exhilarating, and strangely fulfilling, slightly to my surprise. It moves me to think that someday I must seek out a true soul mate – someone who enjoys dressing to the part, like me.

Ah well. There will be time. Today I need to prepare for my first joust with a new doctor – one whom I understand was almost pulled from the job because of a family relationship to Dutchess County’s own Sheriff Sunfish. The potential is tantalizing.

And Batman? Well, he’s clever, of course; that’s what I pay him for, in the coin of my outrageous challenges. We’re more alike than he’d care to admit, he and I. He has his act, I have mine; we just reap different kinds of applause. That’s what the shrinks here could never understand – that we’re a team, like the business families that used to draw trade by staging loud price wars in the street. He doesn’t understand it either, of course. But I’ll explain it to him some day.

Courting punishment? Nah.

Just pausing to take my bows.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


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